Blogging the San Diego Padres… established 1997

The Duck Stops Here

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time

-T.S. Eliot

As another season draws to a close, so does another year of following the Padres at Ducksnorts. And while our favorite baseball team will return to fight again next year, I will not.

After 14 years of producing Ducksnorts, I no longer have the time or energy necessary to do so at a level of quality acceptable to me. The sacrifices and compromises one is willing to make in life at age 42 are different from those one is willing to make at age 28.

Ballplayers get old. Writers get old. Priorities change.

When Ducksnorts first launched in 1997, Hank Aaron and Roger Maris reigned as baseball’s home run kings, Derrek Lee still played for the Padres, and Anthony Rizzo was just entering the third grade. In some respects, it seems like a lifetime ago. Heck, I’ve never even lived in a place as long as I’ve written Ducksnorts.

The list of people I need to acknowledge for their support and guidance is prohibitively long, so we’ll just stick to generalities. Thanks to everyone who ever read, commented, or otherwise participated here at Ducksnorts; to everyone who bought my books; to the folks at Top Prospect Alert, Hardball Times, All-Baseball/MVN, b5media, Baseball Daily Digest, Baseball Prospectus, and ESPN for providing me with opportunities to reach a wider audience than I’d ever dreamed possible; to current and former members of the Padres front office, broadcast team, and other departments for their generosity of time and spirit; to local, national, and international broadcast and print media who have taken an interest in my work here; and to everyone who doesn’t fall into one of the aforementioned categories.

Thanks most of all to my wife of nearly 16 years for putting up with more of my nonsense than you’ll ever know. How and why she has done so lies quite beyond my comprehension, but I am grateful beyond words that she has.

To everyone reading this: It has been an honor and a pleasure to serve you as best I could over the years. If you need to find me for whatever reason, I’ll still be at Baseball Prospectus, Twitter, Petco Park, and various minor-league ballparks.

Thanks so much for what you’ve provided for Padres and baseball fans over the past 14 years. I really believe that reading this site on a regular basis has made me a better baseball fan and a better writer. I’m currently writing for an Anaheim Ducks blog and I can see in the things that I write about and the way that I write them just how much I’ve been influenced by this site.

Your absence will definitely leave a void in Padres coverage on the blogosphere. Best of luck in everything you do from here on out. I can’t wait to see you again in Cooperstown in four years.

Geoff,
I have only found Ducksnorts a couple of years ago as I was looking for Padre insights after I left the San Diego area. I have come to appreciate your writing style, humor, and dedication to baseball. Because of folk like yourself, I have not lost the connection to My Padres!

Thanks for your desire to take the chances needed to “put it out there”.

Ducksnorts was one of the first baseball blogs I ever discovered. Up until that point I had been basically writing for myself, but after reading your stuff I realized there were other people doing the same thing – it opened my eyes to the whole concept of blogging and led me toward the discovery of the baseball blogging community. It enriched my love of baseball, gave purpose to all the time I was “wasting” caring about baseball as much as I did, and set me on a path that definitely improved my life.

You say “the sacrifices and compromises one is willing to make in life at age 42 are different from those one is willing to make at age 28,” and I couldn’t agree more. I’m impressed you made it this far at such a consistently high level – the baseball landscape is better for it.

Thanks for everything you wrote here, and for your passion and insight about the Padres specifically and baseball in general. See you around!

Thanks for terrific Padres coverage. I will never forget “discovering” DS sometime in 2002 — and being excited to read something that was so insightful about the Pads.

The Game Threads were something that I enjoyed immensely, and bring me back to when I had the time and energy to participate in “real time” reaction to Pads games. I will always remember how much fun participating in the 2007 game 163 thread was (not for the final result, of course, we all know Holliday was out) but for the hundreds of comments — it was like being at the game with a bunch of old buddies. Sans the beer, of course — although I think I had a few.

I will miss the DS community and thoughtful discussion that occurred here.

Thanks for the years of great writing. When I moved to San Diego in 2001 Ducksnorts was instrumental in turning me into a Padres fan and I have no doubt you had a similar effect on others. The Padres fan base may be smaller and more laid back than most other teams but we’ve been incredibly fortunate to have you blogging about the team before blogs were even a thing. I’m sure we’ll read your writing in other venues but it won’t be quite the same. Ducksnorts will be missed.

This leaves a huge void. Though I have to appreciate the poetry of you leaving at the same time the Padres Broadcast team and radio teams are in the air. Its absolutely an end of an ERA. If you decide to keep a (free) presence on the internet elsewhere, please let us know on twitter.

As much as I have been critical of your sometimes depressing (if realistic) take on the team on Gaslampball and elsewhere. I dare say there is *no one* around with more detailed knowledge of Padres history than you Geoff. For lifelong fans of the Padres, such as my self, it always warms my heart to know that there is someone out there who can remind me so many of our random players.

Hate to see Ducksnorts go, but I think we all realize you are much bigger than the blog as your personable writing-style reminds us. Thank you so much for all the time and effort you put into delivering thoughtful analysis for the hometown team. An additional thanks for going out on top rather than limping towards blog retirement (i.e. Michael Jordan and Andy Rooney).

One final question: where will we get our Padres news now? With all due respect to the other Padre blogs, nobody even seems to come close. Where will you keep up with the Padres?

First, and foremost … THANK-YOU, GY! You make me want to be a better fan

We will *always* be Ducksnorters!

RJ asks the right question … where can/will we go?

Personally, I started paying for MadFriars a couple of years ago … and have found it to be worth the price … but it’s not a daily blog on the Padres … though this year they did a good job of (near) daily posts about the goings on down on the farm.

Or, we can see just how long GY keeps allowing comments here in this thread … I say we go down swinging

GY you will be missed! As someone who has blogged off and on (more off) since ’07, I don’t know how you’ve lasted as long as you have. More importantly how you were able to churn out great article, after great article, on a daily basis especially when the Padres teams have been, well, not so great.

When I was doing links on my site I would go through each website and see if they had something new posted. Most of them, I’d just grab the link and throw it in the links column and never look back. When I got to Ducksnorts I’d always stop and read what you had to say.

The Avenger-In-Chief and myself were discussing a while back, how we knew if we wrote a great article….it was linked to on Ducksnorts.

With that said, I wish you luck for the future and I know I will surely bump into you sometime down the road.

The best single-team focused blog retires after a brilliant run. What a classy exit.

I’m going to miss your fine balance between analyst and fan (hard to achieve but you nail it), your voice and news I can respect about my own home team’s blood-rivals — the Mariners will never again be able to use your insights to scout their mortal enemies.

Best wishes to you — I’m confident you’ll ace whatever you take on next with the grace and utility of what you have achieved with Ducksnorts.

OT – This comment on a BP article about the drama of last night’s games jump’d out at me …

Three times in the last five seasons Adrian Gonzalez’s teams have lost the last game of the season to miss the playoffs – in two of those games his team had the lead in the final inning. They might have to start calling it the Curse of Adrian Gonzalez.

Wow. Of all the necessary thank yous, the biggest one should be from us readers to you. Thank you for providing such an insanely consistent supply of quality brain candy. I have no idea how you did it. You are the gold standard of what a team’s blogger should be.

Thanks for sharing with us these many years. I first came to Ducksnorts 8 years ago from the old Fanstop board. Your blog was the first Padres blog I discovered, and I immediately felt like I didn’t have to find another. I echo what others have said, this place will be missed. Good luck to you. I wish you the best.

As a Padres fan who lives in northern California I had turned to blogs a few years back to find the best coverage of my beloved Padres because, aside from the U-T, mainstream media coverage was nonexistent. This is where I discovered your blog. The name stood out to me of course as a reference only a Padre fan would get.
I was even more blown away by the writing. I spent hours reading past and current posts and marveled at the attention to detail and passion put forth in your writing. Reading your blog also got me looking for others and I discovered a wealth of them, from Gaslamp Ball to Avenging Jack Murphy to The Friarhood, which I happily contribute to.
Your writing has been an inspiration to me personally and I salute you for your service. You will be missed but will be recognized as a pioneer in my eyes.
Best of luck to you and your future endeavors and once again, thank you.

Thank you for all the great posts over the years. Your commitment to San Diego baseball is truly appreciated by all the Padres fans lucky enough to have discovered your site. Although I am saddened because I don’t know where I’m going to get my sabermetric analysis of Padres past and present now, I wish you the best of luck on your future endeavors.

This an even bigger bolt from the blue than Dan Johnson’s HR last night.

I don’t know what to say, so I’ll just say thanks. Thanks for putting up thought-provoking articles about the Padres. Thanks for linking to my blog from time to time. Avenger in Chief and SDPads1 got it exactly right – it was a badge of honor to get a Ducksnorts link. Thanks for answering comments and emails, and thanks for caring.

Guess I’m going to have to spend even more time at Baseball Prospectus.

GY: All I have to say is that I’m totally bummed. Where else am I going to get good Padres insight? Living in Dallas, I’ve relied on you to keep me informed of what’s really going on with my favorite team.

Very bummed as well way up here in Montana! Not only did i rely on your insights about my favorite team, but you are one hell of a fine writer. made me laugh countless times with your ability to make a quirky reference or turn a phrase. I even found myself forwarding your blog to my “non-padre fan” friends. Plus dont you know that you are hanging it up one year early? Everyone knows the Padres go to the World Series every 14 years…….yep.

Geoff, congratulations on 14 years of Ducksnorts! I’ll miss your writing and wish you well. I’ve said it before and this seems like a good time to say it again, “allegedly switch-hitting” is an all-time great line. Keep writing whenever, whatever and wherever you can.

sad to see it go; I only found ducksnorts a little while back, so it seems so short lived for me. I’ve lived in arizona for the past 9 years, so my interaction with other Padre fans were few and far between, so it was nice to be able to share with some other fans that knew about players other than Adrian and Heath Bell. Hopefully I’ll find some where else to read and share about the team, and good luck with what ever you do going forward.

I only found out about this place about 3 seasons ago….and now your leaving??

Thank you though, this was really THE BEST Padres blog, if not the BEST blog in all of San Diego. You really made me feel like the Padres were a real major league team. Thank you again and you will be missed. I’ll still be following on twitter.

Wow. Say it ain’t so. I just found this site in the last couple years.

I appreciate your writing style. Most of all, I appreciate the tone you set in establishing a blog that does not endear to the mob mentality and mean spirited comments of many other blogs. I have found the people that post in here to have incredibly diverse viewpoints while simultaneously agreeing to love the Padres.

I will miss this site being part of my daily routine.

Thanks for the great site and reads.

Padres Future

P.S. I intend to continue to periodically write on my blog, with a definate slant to the future of the Padres. I welcome any posters to comment there. Anyone posting here that also blogs on the Padres, please post your site address as I will sadly now need to find my Padres fix elsewhere.

Thanks, all, for the kind words and generous support over the years. I will not soon forget it.

@Phantom: I’m glad to hear that you are putting your writing skills to work. The Gwynn induction was a blast. We’ll see you back out there for Trevor Time.

@Dean: Thanks, man; much appreciated.

@Ruz: Thanks so much for bringing me onboard at All-Baseball.com back in the day. Working with you and the other A-B bloggers forced me to step up my game in ways I hadn’t imagined possible. That experience set me on a good path as well.

@Nick G: Yeah, the Game 163 IGD was nuts. That whole season was nuts. Thank goodness we all had each other, eh?

@Anthony: Geez, you’ve been reading almost as long as I’ve been writing. Glad you’ve stuck with us all these years. Everyone in San Diego should love the Padres; glad you’re setting a good example. Thanks for the continued support.

@Daniel: I’ll keep everyone informed of any developments on Twitter. And for you, here’s one more random Padres player: Dave Hilton. They took him with the first pick overall in the 1971 January draft but should have taken USD catcher John Wathan, who went to Kansas City three picks later.

@RJ: Where will I keep up with the Padres? Good question; I haven’t thought that far ahead yet… I will note that several commenters in this thread have blogs that you can get to by clicking on their names.

@LynchMob: Go down swinging? Like Ruben Rivera? You should have higher standards than that.

@SDPads1: We’ll be in touch. Thanks for all the cool events you put on to help keep folks interested in what turned out to be a lousy season on the field. It made a difference.

Ducksnorts was the first blog I found in 2001 when I discovered the internet. I’ve read nearly every post since, commented on a large nimber of them, participated in a couple season’s worth of online in-game chats with fellow Ducksnorters, and had the honor of participating in the editing process of the Ducksnorts Annual.

Geoff, I think I speak for many when I say that you’ve greatly added to what was already a great joy to us all: rabidly following Padre baseball. Thanks to you and to my fellow readers for sharing your love of the game and of our team.

@Jeff: At least Seattle will always have Kenny G. But seriously, thanks for the kind words.

@FBR: In reviewing the notes from our last meeting, I see that we are long overdue. Luckily, I have some free time…

@Ryan: Rob Johnson will win the triple crown.

@Chris: Thanks for the kind words, as well as for the excellent blog and book design. You made Ducksnorts look great.

@Didi: I’ll talk to you later. Scotch and/or beer will be involved.

@Richard D.: It’s been great chatting with and learning from you over the years. Don’t be a stranger.

@Loren: Thank you; it was my pleasure.

@Lee: Thanks, and keep up the great work. As you know, this site’s existence is due in no small part to our discussions on the old AOL message boards. Maybe one of these years we’ll see a rematch of 1984, but with a more favorable outcome…

@Bruce K.: Good to hear from you. Perhaps we will see each other in Peoria next spring.

@Zach: Thanks for the invite. One of these days I’ll get over there and say hey.

@Jeremy: Glad to have helped in some small way. Keep up with your own writing. I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again. I started Ducksnorts in large part because I was not satisfied with the coverage available at the time. Things have improved, but they can always get even better. At the risk of going all Dead Poets Society on you, you and everyone else reading this has the power to make it happen. I look forward to seeing what comes next.

@Mike@PT: Did you seriously just compare me to a career .235/.334/.405 hitter? Because I’ll take that… I enjoy reading your stuff and am grateful to see that you are dedicating at least some of your time to covering your adopted second team, the Padres. I plan on attending more SABR meetings, which I have come to enjoy and which reminds me… everyone should join SABR. It’s the coolest thing ever.

@Nick W: Thank you, sir.

@Steve: Thanks, man; keep it going. Congrats on the radio gig, and represent…

@Kelly in SD, Kramerica, Jacob, and Rob: Thanks, and apologies for not having something more profound to offer in the way of response.

@Johnny Utah: I will be missed? Improve your aim. Seriously, thanks.

@Brian O’Connor: Once every 14 years… hmm, good point. Best players to come out of Montana? John Lowenstein and Dave McNally. Also from Montana: Rob Johnson.

@bee1000: Hah, thanks for reminding me of that line. Glad you enjoyed it.

@Adam A: Arizona, eh? Maybe we will run into each other at spring training…

@PadresFuture: Thanks for mentioning the community. It is the finest compliment you can give me to note that I’ve surrounded myself with good people. I have enjoyed and learned much from the discussions here. I look forward to reading more of your stuff about the farm system…

@Kevin: Long time, no talk. Great to hear from you; thanks for everything.

@John: Thanks much for the generous offer and the great minor-league coverage.

@Lance: Thanks for all your contributions to the site and the books over the years, and for the games, music, etc. Rock on…

I’m glad I at least got to read the last year of your writing. Darn it! This blog was a life line to following the agony that is being a Padres fan. Of course being in D.C. it’s only going to get worse as the Nats get better.

Not enough thanks I can say.

Just one request. Please use whatever karma you have to get Venable to return with a .350 OBP next year.

Of course this would happen the one week a year when I’m busy with work, limiting the time I can spend on a reply. One of the many ways in which GY made me feel inadequate as a writer was the volume of high-quality pieces he turned out. How could he create so much good stuff? Now he’s doing it again, I can’t possibly put together something that explains how much I’ve enjoyed DS without letting five other deadlines whoosh by me.

Thanks for all the amazing posts over the years Geoff. We Padres fans (esp. those enjoying a little light humor to go with some messy games) will truly miss you. Wish you the best of luck in all your future work.

I think the comments on this post are indicative of the loyalty of your fan base. There are other more popular Padres blogs out there, but I always came to Ducksnorts for in depth analysis. Granted some of it was about inane players from before my time, but what true baseball fan doesn’t enjoy the history of the game.

Thanks, Geoff, for all the great analysis and terrific writing through the years. I loved all the analytical posts but the history of Pads baseball was the best. I’ve been around for all 40+ years of the major leagues in San Diego and remember a lot of those players, great strolls down memory lane. Best of luck with whatever you do next. Go Padres!

First blog I ever found. As a “lonely” east coast Padres fan, this was my first link to a community of Padres fans. More than that, it became my link to substantive and thought-provoking Padres content. As always, you are doing things on your own terms… and I couldn’t be more impressed.